What do you guys think of the league so far?

Personally, I believe that the league, regarding viewership and interaction, has been a tremendous success. I was wearing my Agilities jersey once in a bowling alley. And was stopped and asked "why not soOn," so I sat down and discussed OWL with a total stranger for a few minutes. I never thought I'd experience that level of interaction and devotion with the fans. 100k viewers per match is splendid, and I feel it will only increase.

However, I feel as though the league is in a bit of a predicament. NYXL is ahead of the pack, far better than any other team, and although Boston did give them a fight, they were no match. Teams like Shanghai going winless is just sad, and Dallas is a total shitshow, ruining the league.
I find myself not being interested in playoffs and matches just because I know NYXL is only going to kill everybody in the end. And such blatant skill differences are not healthy for a league to survive. I do expect things to get better slowly, mainly because communication will get better between non-Korean teams. Season 2 will be interesting to see, and I want this league to thrive, because so far its been very fun to watch

One problem is harsh penalties. In an attempt to get rid of controversy, teams and OWL have implemented severe penalties for seemingly minor offenses. However, this has only made fans angry. The xQc situation just made TriHard 7 spam constant and caused everyone involved to be furious at one another. EQO getting a four-match ban seemed uncalled for, and all these harsh punishments and drama has painted the league in a harsh light

The inaugural season has had lots of ups and downs. Hopefully, Season 2 is even better than season 1, because if improvements are made, and the fans stay involved, this league will make for some prime entertainment.
#ZP4S2

I’ll get massively downfragged for this but in my eyes, ZP’s casting isn’t good enough for OWL, and hes not the ideal “personable”, more charismatic or marketable option for a caster, regardless of his knowledge for the game.

I think you make some good points, but while NYXL is definitely at the top, I don’t think the skill levels of teams are as disparate as you say- in fact, many matches are extremely close which is what I think makes this league so good.

I also love how a lot of focus has been put on the players and developing their storylines and personalities more throughout Watchpoint content, interviews, etc. I really feel like I know lots of these players and can even relate to some of them.

Now we wait for

ROBOKUN TO COME ARGUE HOW OWL IS TRASH

I've been thinking a lot about the disparity in skill level through out the whole league and I feel like it's a lot better off than a lot of traditional sports leagues. What's important about some of the worse teams (Florida, SHD, Dallas) is that they ave these really passionate fan bases surrounding them. It's so crucial for them to have that support because it makes them want to improve and show up for their fan base. Like it is such a good feeling (right before the crushing defeat) to hear the stadium going absolutely nuts when SHD pulls off a play because people loooooove them.

It reminds me of a club like Aston Villa who is kind of shit, but has this super rich history and fan base surrounding them. That support makes it so much more sustainable in the long run to invest and grow a team, and fosters this community that really loves watching them.

The grind of it has started to wear me down a bit. I used to watch every Fusion and Valiant game, now I'm happy catching 1 of the 4 weekly games and checking out the results of the other 3. I was considering getting myself a Boombox shirt but I don't know if I'm invested enough in OWL anymore to justify the cost.

The production quality is fantastic, casters and analyists are great along with there being so many amazingly close games. At the moment though there's just a little bit too much too often for me. What a first world problem!

Giving Shanghai a spot was a mistake. Other than that, I'd say the league has been really competitive, with good production and fairly well-handled drama. Sure, the whole xQc thing could have gone a lot better, but DreamKazper and Undead were handled very well and the boosters have generally gotten enough of a punishment to keep most people happy. My biggest complaint is that stage playoffs are still almost completely meaningless and I have no real incentive to watch them.

Viewership seems pretty decent as it's somewhere between 100-150k (in twitch) everyday, but of course we have to see, what kind of numbers final playoffs will have. Production is pretty good overall.

Obliviously some games seems so boring to even watch (like NYXL vs Dallas or Shanghai). As overall I think Stage 1 was just to find out, "what is Overwatch League" so no need to look too deeply into viewership or games in Stage 1. There was couple awesome games, but many teams were still scrappy. In Stage 2 couple of those teams, which were scrappy at the beginning started to get their pieces together and compete for Top-6. As for Stage 3 I feel a bit exhausted maybe watching so much earlier already as I tried to watch as much as I can, but now I am almost just browsing something else at the same time, if match is not very interesting. But that's EU times so it's pretty hard to follow.

I don't think penalties have been that much off. Pretty sure there was something else with xQc than his twitch chat things. He was just not ready to be a professional Overwatch player as his stream was just too precious for him. xQc just loved to create drama on his stream even he probably didn't mean half of, what he said. EQO was not banned by the League, only fined. Philly Fusion "banned" him internally.

SADO getting 30 games and OGE only 4 games is puzzling though. Only way I can understand that is OGE joined Dallas like at the end of Stage 2 so he "missed" 18 games before his signing. Of course there can be different levels in their stories, but probably just didn't want to screw up Dallas totally for rest of the season.

As of Season 2 expectations I would like to see more teams (4 or 6), more analysts (2), new caster duo (EU Contenders casters) well more analysts/casters depending how many new teams will join the League. Korean player percentage dropping from 45% and more EU and NA players (currently EU 25%, NA 20%).

• I actually think a lot of games are closer than the scorelines often indicates. It often comes down to small mistakes the bottom teams make more. I kinda expect for future seasons to get tighter games when teams get more established. Hopefully with some new teams and fresh faces.

• However it will never happen because of the OWL structure, promotion and demotion gives teams things to fight for. Imo it should work like this: Throw the winning contender teams in a pool with the bottom two teams from the OWL and let them do playoffs for a spot in OWL. Contenders teams put a lot of effort in playing together and winning should be rewarding into something greater than price money. Getting picked up by an OWL-team just fucks over the team again.

• Map pick/ban system seems like a must at this point, makes it way more interesting. Watching the same map 5 times each week is insanely boring aswell.

• I expect viewership decreasing. 3 games/day with 3day weeks for basicially 5 months straight is way too long to keep it fresh. I used to watch the vods often the day after. But now, if I watch 30% of the games, it's alot. It still sucks for non-Americans to watch games as vods never give the same experience. I'm also curious how many people just leave Twitch open to get the OWL skins.

• Good overall production quality with 0 technical difficulties and nice schedule. Good analyst desk, besides Bren memeing a bit too much imo. The only casting duo I like is Uber & Mr. X. So some new casters would be pleasant.

Yes the OWL league has kept me more engaged than I thought it would. Production is smooth and the high viewership definitely caught many people by surprise.

The only area I wish to see improvement is the observers!!! It is so frustrating to watch OWL's observing having started watching competitive overwatch from APEX Korea. It's amazing how they manage to catch all the fail moments though. The observing has definitely improved leaps and bounds since pre-season but I just wish they could get the old apex observers back on board.

Also I feel that I'm turning to the Korean casters more because their comments are on point and I feel like I am engaged more in the matches as compared to the English casting. Despite Korean being my 3rd language and I'm not as fluent in it as compared to my English.

Agree that all the ban/suspending drama has sort of overshadowed the actual game hype. And seeing players like Rascal getting thrown back and forth and Envy being dropped back to Contenders in only a few months is so hard to watch. Allowing OWL to pick players from Contenders now and then may also affect the quality of Contenders in the long run. Like you train a team only for a player or two to leave for OWL and have to restart the process again.

Looking forward to more balance between the top and bottom tier teams!! Not fun when results are predictable right?

I honestly believe OWL is doing great, and I say great based on the expectations I personally had before it started (which weren't very high).

Robokun, despite everything else brings forward a very good point imo, for the lenght it has as a league, the teams are not enough, and the games are way too close to eachother without sufficient breaks, and you can tell that players (as well as coaches) are already starting to burn out.

From a spectator point of view is not such a big issue, as you can choose when to watch a match and when to do something different, but if you are involved (players, teams, casters, etc...) is not a matter of choice anymore, and I personally hate to see persons burning out.

The biggest issue OWL has is one that is prevalent in other IRL major league sports. Due to the high buy in cost you have a rich old mans club of owners (for the most part) in order not to offend this big payday, you have no promotion/relegation. So Shanghai can literally lose every game but if the revenues are worth it, owners won't care. If there was not a pricey franchise and Contenders winners managed to qualify to the OWL or similar, there would be something of interest and in turn would elevate the level of Contenders globally. Instead you have Contenders being a secondary cash cow for Blizzard on twitch and preserving some none OWL professionalism but honestly, little else. The "path to pro" is nonsense, any good coach or indeed team would easily scout potential players if they wanted to. The path to pro should be a team effort, not the player.

Outside of this, I think OWL mirrors a lot of sports. We are inundated with football, american football, basketball, hockey etc, why not eSports I guess.

On the casters - Semmler's lunacy is leaking into Hex, he's talking a lot of waffle recently too, regardless he knows his stuff, but jst you wait, Semmler will blindly lead him down "JOHNNY ON THE SPOT" alley soon enough.